Hernandez 002320-061
Motif of Motherly Affections Towards Benjamin and Shinji
World Literature Assignment #1
Comparative Study
Jorge Hernandez
Candidate #: 002320-296
May 2009
John A. Ferguson High School
Language A1
Higher Level
Word Count: 1,147
There comes a time in a person’s life when the immense pressure or work
becomes overwhelming to them, it is not surprising if they were to crack under the pressure. At this point, the parents of said person would intervene and try to re-build their child’s broken foundation. When it comes to females, the father would help, and if the person were to be male, the mother would help. This is because males have a deeper bond with their mothers and females have a deeper bond with their fathers. In the novels Fiela’s Child and The Sound of Waves, the motif of motherly affection towards Benjamin and Shinji contributes to the plot development.
The motif of motherly affection towards Benjamin in Fiela’s Child contributes to the plot development because of the hardships that Benjamin must face throughout his journey to find his true identity. In the novel, Benjamin is taken away from Fiela because he is a white boy and Fiela is black. However, before he was taken away, he had to speak with the magistrate, the “master” of the land. Before Benjamin met the magistrate, Fiela had packed all his belongings, and a “lucky” shirt and kept re-assuring him that he will come back, to not be afraid because everything is going to be all right. “Be brave. Please God…Don’t crumble it up.” (Matthee 64) shows that Benjamin was having his doubts on whether or not he will be going back to Fiela or be taken away, and Fiela, being motherly, was trying to comfort him. She prepared his luggage for the journey to see the magistrate, putting on his clothes and a new shirt. The new shirt was for luck, so he was to out it on before the meeting, and then take it off after. With this, Benjamin was seeing the love and care that Fiela was giving him, which is why he fought vigorously to stay with her. This pulls up the quest of what a mother really is, in which case a mother is the woman who took care of you and nurtured you throughout your life. Without Fiela’s affection, Benjamin would have never stayed with her; he would have ran away near the beginning of the novel. “Whose child is this? the tall one asked, aghast…We’re going back to Knysna tomorrow, we’ll inquire about the other child” (Matthee 21) shows how Fiela protected her right to keep Benjamin, especially because he did not want to let go of her. The two men who were trying to take Benjamin away were comparing him to a boy named Lukas, who, coincidentally, was a white boy who was lost in the forest nine years earlier, which is the same amount of years in which Fiela first found Benjamin. With the backup of Fiela, Benjamin fought against the fact that he was Lukas, even when he found himself to be with the Van Rooyen family, the ones who had the missing son.